1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates in general to a camouflage structure, and more particularly to a camouflage structure capable of altering its appearance.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has been one of the major concerns of soldiers that whether or not they were being concealed in the combat field to have better surviving chance. Camouflage, having capability of concealment and deception, works by tricking the eye and brain and how they recognize color, volume and shape. Because only a small area of the eye perceives color, the brain does a lot of filling in as it processes images. Camouflage takes advantage of this by helping an observer see the pattern as part of the background. Generally, soldiers in the different combat fields requires different combat uniforms having specific camouflage patterns, such as woodland camouflage patterns, desert camouflage patterns and marine camouflage patterns. It can be imagined how dangerous it is if the soldier in the different combat fields wears the combat uniform with inadequate camouflage patterns. Also, there is not a mono-type of environment of the combat fields. It is desired to develop a camouflage product with good adaptability and capable of changing the colors of camouflage patterns in response to the environmental change. The camouflage pattern of MultiCam®, proposed by Crye Precision, could be one of the top three products recently having good adaptability to across different environments including forest and desert. MultiCam® is a 7-color multi-environment camouflage pattern developed by Crye Precision in conjunction with U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center, and has been used as combat uniforms for some U.S. Army soldiers that will blend in with their environment better and make them harder to be seen.
The camouflage pattern of MultiCam® was selected by conducting large amounts of the photo-simulation study, including photographs taken in desert, woodland, cropland and mountain terrain settings. The developer also tracked the light, the seasonal and elevation changes that affect any one region and tried to factor all this together, and all the factors are analyzed by the computer to create a camouflage pattern. After numerous prototyping and field testing for pattern improvement, a highly adaptive and effective pattern MultiCam® is created, and the test showed that MultiCam® clearly outperformed the existing Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) in providing concealment. The design takes advantage of the way the human eye and brain perceives shape, volume, and color. Since only a very small portion of the human eye perceives color, the brain does a lot of “filling-in” for the eye. The unique design of MultiCam® takes advantage of this principle and helps the observer to “see” the pattern as part of the background. This helps the wearer's profile begin to lose its edge and fade into whatever color or shape surrounds him. It works on the principle that an observer can see something but still not recognize it as anything to be interested in. Thus, the pattern of MultiCam® is designed to reflect some of the surrounding colors of the environment. It takes on an overall green appearance when under a green forest canopy and an overall tan look when in the open desert. By adapting to varying local lighting conditions, the pattern blends well in many environments, elevations, seasons, weather conditions, and times of the day. The camouflage pattern of MultiCam®, workings by tricking the eye and brain, tells an observer see the pattern as part of the background, and the developer said that a person wearing MultiCam® is able to across a wider range of environments (such as deserts, woodlands and cities) and seasons. However, the pattern of MultiCam® is still a combination and arrangement of millions of small blocks with unchangeable colors, not changeable colors.
For achieving the concealment and deception effect, other pixelized methods, which utilizes the pixel drive theory of the traditional liquid crystal display to change the color of each position by the corresponding pixel, have been provided. However, the traditional pixelized camouflage structures have considerable problems, such as complicated structural designs, difficult to drive and high cost of fabrication, and not suitable for mass productions.